Premier League Shorts

The start of the 2021/22 season started on a sweltering summer day in England as Arsenal strode into the Gtech Community Stadium to take on a Brentford side that had only just a few months before been promoted to the Premier League. The visitors couldn’t have asked for a better fixture to start the season and while not underestimating their hosts whose promotion to the Premier League had come on the back of a Championship playoff final victory at Wembley Stadium against Swansea, Arsenal would have been quietly confident in the fact that not only did they have the better squad but that they were also far more experienced.

Brentford however, defied the bookmakers by getting stuck in and putting their more esteemed visitors to the sword in a pulsating encounter that started a run of three straight losses for Arsenal. A swirl of dark clouds hung over Arsenal in the aftermath of those losses and Arteta who was still relatively new in the job was suddenly under an enormous amount of pressure. Some of the more ardent Arsenal fans couldn’t wait to see the back of a manager they thought wasn’t ready for the role and despite calls from the board for fans to trust the Spaniard’s carefully choreographed process, there was a sense that the support was transient and the manager was living on borrowed time.

Six months later, signs of a revival began to take place at the club. Fans favourite Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was shipped out of the club for pastures anew like Mesut Ozil a few months earlier and emphasis on youth and rebuilding an identity became the core tenet at the club. A season that had threatened to spiral out of control was soon salvaged and only a minor collapse in the final few matches of the season robbed Arsenal of a Champions League place – a disappointment that would have been made worse by the fact that they were pipped to the position by bitter city rivals Tottenham Hotspurs.

Preparation for this season started off with a perfect pre-season workout that saw them traverse Germany and the United States winning all their five friendlies and with the early addition of new signings like Gabriel Jesus from Manchester City for £45m, Marquinhos from Sao Paulo for £3m, Fabio Vieira from Porto for £34m, Matt Turner from New England Revolution for £7.5m and Oleksandr Zinchenko – Manchester City, £32m, they now look like a team that are far more equipped to compete for titles than they were the season before.

Gabriel Jesus seems to be enjoying a new lease of life and is in a rich vein of form even at this early stage of the season. The former Manchester City striker has helped the club win their first three games of the season against Crystal Palace, Leicester City, and Bournemouth making them leaders of the Premier League at this stage of the season. It is a remarkable achievement especially when you realise that the Gunners have not won three consecutive matches to start a Premier League season since the 2004/05 campaign. It’s early days of course and one can’t get too carried away but there’s a certain resolve about this Arsenal side that certainly makes them one of the favourites for a Champions League spot come the end of the season in May 2023.

Abiye Opuamah

Abiye Opuamah is an editor and a massive football enthusiast who also dabbles now and again in writing flash fiction pieces, playing chess against the machine and almost always roots for the underdog. He lives in Johannesburg.